Principal Investigator

Mark Tester

Professor, Plant Science; Associate Director, Center for Desert Agriculture

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Ion transport, Crop science, Plant physiology

Research Scientists

Vanessa Melino

Research Scientist

Research Interests: Plant physiology, Plant nutrition, Salinity tolerance, Root architecture, Ion transport

Ryan Lefers

Agriculture Engineer

Research Interests: Food/water/energy nexus, controlled environment agriculture, saltwater-based agriculture, aquaponics, horticulture lighting, circular agriculture systems

Postdoctoral Fellows

Dongryung Lee

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance

Elodie Rey

Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Crops, Genomics, Transcriptomic, polyploidy, Domestication, stress resillience

Yveline Pailles

​Postdoctoral Fellow

Research Interests: Plant genetics, Plant physiology, Molecular biology, Crop improvement, Salinity tolerance in tomato plants, Wild relatives of tomato, Galapagos tomatoes

PhD Students

Nathaly Ortiz

Ph.D. Student

Research Interests: Grafting, salinity tolerance, tomatoes, polyploids

Clara Stanschewski

Ph.D. Student

Research Interests: Plant genetics, Plant Phenotyping, Genome-Wide Association studies, Genotype x environment interactions, Plant domestication, Climate change

Research Group Staff

Hongwei Ren

Greenhouse Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, tomato

Dinara Utarbayeva

Greenhouse Technician

Research Interests: Crossing, grafting tomatoes, germination and propagating coarctata rice

Gabriele Fiene

Research Specialist

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Domestication, Field trails, Crop wild relatives

Noha O. Saber

Lab Technician

Research Interests: Salinity tolerance, Molecular biology